Immigration

The proposition that more immigration can forestall or eliminate projected shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare funding is a perennial favorite on Op-Ed pages. But it's been shot down again and again by scholars who know what they're talking about. Bad policy ideas, though, never stay dead for long, and so it is that Robert Reich is now trying to revive this fallacy.

It's not easy, given the part of Arlington I live in, but I manage to avoid Lee Highway almost entirely. I get some satisfaction out of my personal boycott. I'd rather be stuck at a few more stoplights, and go a little farther to a different grocery store, than incorporate into my daily routine a thoroughfare named after a man who so "nobly" led the fight to preserve slavery and destroy the United States. Don't even get me started on Jefferson Davis Highway and all its enticing commerce!

"Where are you from?" That's the question that Henry Louis Gates asked famous Americans like Morgan Freeman, Stephen Colbert and Eva Longoria in his PBS specials, "Faces of America" and "African American Lives." The shows revealed some surprising twists and turns in the family trees from which American fame blossomed. But more than that, they taught us something about American identity.

The shows demonstrated that American identity is not found in a simple claim. American identity is revealed in our search to find an answer to a question: "Where are you from?"

President Obama has signaled support for putting immigration reform back on the agenda of Congress between now and the midterm elections in November. Whether Democrats on Capitol Hill want to take on such a contentious issue in the aftermath of the healthcare debate remains to be seen. What is needed is not another rush to produce ill-considered legislation on an artificial deadline, but the emergence of a consensus on the principles of sound immigration reform.

Mexico's violent drug war may be pushing Mexican immigrants and their families to put down deep roots in the United States more quickly and firmly than ever.

For generations, immigrants have dreamed of going back to Mexico to enjoy the fruits of their U.S. labors. Today, fear of violence is keeping more people focused on their futures north of the border and changing longtime patterns of assimilation and migration.

When Americans think of our nation's power (or our imminent lack of it) we tend to point to the national debts, GDP or military prowess. Few have focused on what may well be the country's most historically significant and powerful weapon: its emergence as the modern world's first multiracial superpower.

Unlike the wave of immigration that came through Ellis Island and then subsided, immigration to the United States from Mexico has been virtually uninterrupted for one hundred years. In this vividly detailed book, Tomás R. Jiménez takes us into the lives of later-generation descendents of Mexican immigrants, asking for the first time how this constant influx of immigrants from their ethnic homeland has shaped their assimilation.

Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has introduced legislation that, if passed, would instruct the U.S. Census Bureau not to take into account illegal immigrants and other noncitizens in the 2010 census. I'm all for it. Furthermore, I propose that the government no longer recognize deficits in budgets, record violent crimes in police reports, acknowledge casualties of war or count -- let alone give proper names! -- to hurricanes in weather reports.

Just about any celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 - October 15) will highlight the diversity among Hispanics.

They come from different parts of the Spanish-speaking world, have settled in various areas of the United States, have distinctive customs and come in all shapes and colors.

But an often overlooked difference among Hispanics relates to how many generations back they trace their roots in U.S. history.